Synopses & Reviews
Make the most of your CSA membership - or your garden harvest - with simple yet bold, inventive yet nourishing meals from acclaimed blogger Linda Ly.Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs have connected farms to consumers and made people more in tune with where their food comes from, but still leave many stumped beyond the conventional uses for their produce. How many times has a CSA share arrived with things you've never seen before or not known what to do with?
The CSA Cookbook will help you cook your way through a CSA box (or farmers' market or backyard bounty) with 105 seasonal recipes that utilize every edible part of the plant, from leaves and flowers to stems and seeds. Think of it as a nose-to-tail approach - for vegetables!
With innovative ideas for preparing the lesser-known but no-less-delicious parts of plants, tips for using the odds and ends of vegetables, and easy preservation techniques, Linda Ly helps you get from farm to table without a fuss. Chapters include tomatoes and peppers, leafy greens, peas and beans, bulbs and stems, roots and tubers, melons and gourds, and flowers and herbs. You'll find globally-inspired, vegetable-focused recipes that turn a single plant into several meals - take squash, for instance. This year-round vegetable brings a variety of tastes and textures to the table: Squash Blossom and Roasted Poblano Tacos, Sicilian Squash Shoot Soup, Autumn Acorn Squash Stuffed with Kale, Cranberries, and Walnuts, and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds. If you grow your own food at home, you might be surprised to learn you can eat the leaves from your pepper plants, or pickle the seed pods from your radishes.
The CSA Cookbook aims to inspire curiosity in the garden and creativity in the kitchen. You'll look at vegetables in a whole new way and think twice before you discard your kitchen "scraps"!
Review
"You will have so many why-didn't-I-think-of-that moments as you cook your way through this inspired kitchen-garden book. Linda translates the nose-to-tail ethos into garden speak so well that the only thing to go hungry will be your compost pile." - Ian Knauer, author of The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food
About the Author
Linda Ly is a coastal gardener and cook on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Her blog, Garden Betty (www.gardenbetty.com), features recipes based on the bounty of her CSA box and her own backyard. She loves surprising readers with what they can actually use, such as tomato leaves or the seed pods from radishes. She’s been featured in Country Living, on HGTV, and in the Los Angeles Times, and regularly contributes to The Kitchn, Apartment Therapy, and KCET. When she’s not blogging, she’s busy raising backyard chickens, surfing, stand-up paddleboarding, skiing, snowboarding, climbing, kayaking, backpacking, and camping.